Door Panels

Last night I started on door panels. I had wanted to do something decorative with the doors but during construction it became clear this project would have to wait. Bruce did a beautiful job on the door fabrication and made it so the panels were easily removable. Tonight I began by reviewing my pics folder for trees and I found a nice one of my backyard pecan taken last winter. I setup the projector and then traced various branches onto the doors.

Tracing a natural object is a really good exercise. What you think a tree looks like in your mind and how it actually looks are so different that it's quite stunning. The cartoon vision in one's head has branches always spreading upwards and outwards. When I close my eyes I can see knotty branches but when you actually trace it out you realize that only the major branches are knotty enough to notice. In my cartoon vision, the smaller branches fork fairly regularly but tracing it makes you realize that it is actually very haphazard. Trees and not the result of a nice simple construction rule executed recursively but rather of construction and *destruction*. Without the fallen and broken branches trees look simulated.

I'm thinking of varying the depth of the cuts and hence the numbered sections. As usual with my projects, I have no idea if this is going to work. If it doesn't, oh well, I can replace it with just a sheet of plywood.